Male/Female Math Gap hasn't Improved in 13 Years

2 Comments:

Anonymous said...

That chart in some ways is truly depressing. The scores mirrored each other almost precisely, suggesting that the current differences are practically innate and nothing can ever really be done about them except for disadvantaging boys in some way (like hitting them over the head with a ball peen hammer) or more subtlely.....drugging them with Ritalin, suspending them more often, or refusing to give them the help that they need.

Well it's a bit of a confusing presentation. The two lines represent the same thing - the M/F gap - expressed slightly differently - the lower bar based on the male standard deviation, the upper based on the females s.d., which is significantly smaller.

But that in itself is interesting - there are considerably more females taking the test, yet there's less variance, suggesting either a more homogenous population of female test takers (which is odd given that many more black girls take the test than black men), or that math talent in females really does have a narrower range than males.